Bad Luck

We had been having really bad luck with dogs. I had a really good dog named Molly of whom we had for 5 years. She was a really good dog but a bit of a lump. But she loved running around. We had a five acre property back then and we always let them out while feeding the horses. They would go out of sight and then when we were finished we would call them back and go inside. Always worked. At the time, I was nine, 2005.

One night we did our daily routine, but when we called the dogs back. Our other dog came-but not Molly. We left the gate to the back-yard open and figured she would come back. That night when we went to bed, she was still not there. The next morning she still wasn't there so Dad got in the car and went up and down the road in case she had gotten lost and I went down the back. The grass was long and we couldn't see much. At every step and call we expected to see a flash of white and we would breath a sigh of relief and go back inside; but after a few minutes we got worried. Dad hadn't called. But then I saw it. A gap in the grass where something was flattening it down. There was white. Mum passed it but then I said "Is that her?" my voice crackled. She looked back at where I was pointing a gasped sadly. I asked if she was sleeping and Mum shook her head. I burst into tears and said "what happened" she said she couldn't tell but it looked like a snake bite. Mum rang Dad and she was flushed red. She said he was on his way. I ran like lighting back to the house and threw myself on the couch in tears. They hung there just pouring out, blocking my vision, my mind was trying to figure out if what had just happened was real. It was. Dead real.

I went to the toilet feeling like throwing up but the tears were enough, when I came back through, Mum was there and she explained that she had multiple snake bites on her stomach and we figured she must have been trying to kill the snake when it bit her. She killed the snake and started to come back when the poison hit her. She lied down and died. Later we found a brown snake nearby dead. She had done something that could have saved our lives. I was quiet for days after that.

* * * * *

A week or two later it was the Melbourne cup and my Mum put me in a draw for the race. My name was pulled out with Makybe Diva. After she won the race I got what seemed like heaps of money at the time (remember I was nine) and with the money I bought a dog. Because Makybe Diva winning seemed like good luck I named the dog Makybe. We let her out while doing the horses, but kept an eye on her. One night about a week after getting her I was playing on the computer while Mum and Dad fed the horses when I heard a faint whimper from behind me. I looked and expected to see Makybe asking to have a hug. But there was nothing there. I decided my mind was playing tricks on me and went back to the game. Just then the sliding door shot open with a bang. Mum said with urgency "Get makybe's' bed. I rushed around and saw mum kneeling at the steps with Makybe in her arms. Makybe was wheesing, struggling for every breath and had a huge hoof-print on her side. I cried desperately "what happened?" Mum said they heard a loud yelp and Makybe ran over to them. One of the horses had trod on her. I ran and got the bed and Mum placed her in it. She was now hardly breathing and I said to Mum, "Will she make it?" she replied "I don't think so" Used to the idea of a dog dying and not have been having her so long my reaction was not as severe. I did, however, feel extremely dizzy and fallen to my knees in confusion. My head was spinning. 2 dogs. One month. One broken heart.

It ended up being quite ironic as a dog called Makybe (a horse) was eventually killed because of a horse.

* * * * *

Later on in the year my Mum e-mailed triple M and told them the whole story and asked them to advertise a want for a Jack-russel puppy to see if I could get one to heal my heart.

One day my Mum got a phone-call at work to say that they read her e-mail and Cozzie (Still on triple-M at the time) was coming to our house (Penfield, South Australia) all the way from Adelaide to interview me.

That afternoon when I got home from school and Dad got home from work he said Mum had a surprise for me. Completely oblivious to the situation I waited patiently for Mum to get home (4:30pm). When she told me I was in shock and didn't know if I could go through with telling the story. But just seeing Cozzie's (My idol's) face made me forget the trouble and I told im the whole story without crying once (although the way the put it on the radio sounded like I was bawling before-hand). Then he said he had some 'CD's' to give me and he would get them out of the car. He came back with a backpack and put it in front of me. He said to open it. He turned the microphone on to see how I would react. A soon as I unzipped that back-pack my heart was repaired and my world brightened up. A puppy crawled out. Cozzie had given me a puppy.

This time the tears were different. They were tears of happiness.

True story!

J.B.